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Gabriel looked like he’d aged five years when he finally returned to their table at the bar, ignoring the shot Hugo slid over to him. He slumped back in the chair, defeated, and for the first time since Nathan had met him, Gabriel had no walls up, no persona that he was putting on. He stared into the distance for a moment, his gaze tired and unfocused.
“Get what you needed?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. We can go.”
“What was it then, that was so valuable?” Nathan couldn’t help but be curious too, despite his annoyance. If Gabriel didn’t need whatever it was to open the portal to Mercury’s, then he had intentionally derailed their plans just to get it back as soon as possible. Was it dangerous? Some family heirloom? Even when he had been listing off the items left behind in his flat in London, he hadn’t seemed especially inclined to go back for them, accepting that they were gone. This one was clearly different.
Not bothering to reply, Gabriel pulled something out of his pocket, holding it up to them for a moment.
“A children’s book?!” Annalise’s tone was disbelieving.
“It’s a first edition.”
Annalise let out a noise of irritation beside him, and Nathan felt inclined to do the same. They didn’t have time to wait around for Gabriel to recover a children’s book - Nathan didn’t have time to wait around. This was quite literally a matter of life or death for him, and Gabriel knew that.
“What was so important about the book?”
“Someone important gave it to me.” Nathan waited for Gabriel to elaborate. He didn’t.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Can’t remember.” Don’t remember? That was odd. Was Gabriel lying to them? Nathan was only half paying attention to the conversation going on around him as he confirmed that yes, he was the son of Marcus Edge, and the Fairborn council expected him to kill his father.
Unfortunately, Nathan’s thoughts were interrupted as Gabriel stormed out of the bar, Annalise waving a sarcastic goodbye after him.
____________
Later, when they were finally away from the bar and on the road, Nathan couldn’t help himself from wondering about that book. It was obviously important to Gabriel, considering he’d gone to such lengths to get it back. And why say that someone important had given it to him, if he couldn’t actually remember who? It seemed to Nathan like he was simply avoiding the question. If he didn’t want to talk about it, fine. It really wasn’t his or Annalise's business - they’d only known him two days, after all. But why lie about it? It hadn’t been sitting right with Nathan since the conversation in the bar earlier, and even now hours later, staring out the window of the old car Gabriel had stolen while the countryside zoomed past him, Nathan’s thoughts kept coming back to that damn book and Gabriel’s cryptic explanation of it.
Nathan had resolved to keep a closer eye on Gabriel since then. Something about him wasn’t sitting right with Nathan- not that he thought they shouldn’t trust Gabriel, but Nathan was intrigued by how little he and Annalise knew about their companion, and how little he seemed willing to tell them. Gabriel was a dozen different mysteries wrapped up in his long, oversized trench coat, and Nathan was determined to unravel them.
Gabriel was the first Blood Witch he had ever met, and Nathan told himself that was why he couldn’t stop wondering about the other man. After all, Nathan was part Blood Witch too (more than part, if the heartbeats he kept hearing were any indication), so wouldn’t it be more unusual if he wasn’t interested in Gabriel and his past? Surely he could teach Nathan more about Blood Witches than the fairborns ever had.
And besides, Nathan rationalized, it would be irresponsible of him and Annalise to follow Gabriel blindly. They had no proof Gabriel was on their side. After their altercation in the bar, Nathan was uncomfortably aware that as much as he was despised by Fairborn Witches, Bloods might hate him just as much, if they considered him a threat to Marcus. And Gabriel was a Blood, wasn’t he? It wasn’t impossible that he harbored similar feelings towards him, and in association, Annalise. And as such, Nathan should be keeping an eye on him, right?
Which was why Nathan was paying enough attention to notice when Gabriel forgot where he had put their map for the second time that day. Gabriel had been quietly rooting through his pockets -seriously, how many of them did that coat have?- and muttering in French under his breath, becoming increasingly exasperated by the second. Nathan watched him for a minute. Finally, after Gabriel seemed to be going through each pocket for the third time, Nathan figured he had better intervene.
“Hey,” Nathan murmured, letting his shoulder bump against Gabriel’s. “If you’re looking for the map, you gave it to Annalise about an hour ago to give her a chance to navigate. It’s probably still in her pocket.”
Gabriel didn’t acknowledge Nathan’s words, but a minute later he called out, “Hey, Annalise, give me the map back. I think we might be going too far to the left,” and veered over in her direction to take it back.
When Gabriel and Annalise stopped walking and she began pulling out the elusive map, Nathan took that as his cue to flop down onto the ground and catch his breath. He may have been in good shape, but this terrain was unforgiving, especially when they were running low on water.
While Gabriel and Annalise debated directions, Nathan mulled over his interaction with Gabriel in his mind. It was weird, right? Gabriel hadn’t given the map to Annalise too long ago, so he should have remembered that. It wasn’t like there was much else going on right now, they’d just been walking for hours.
Nathan thought back to earlier, when Gabriel had rifled through the car for almost five minutes before finding the map he had put in the glovebox himself. At the time, Nathan had attributed it to the chaotic nature of their departure from Paris, wanting to leave as quickly as possible lest the Bloods caught up to them. Now though, he was less inclined to ignore it. Forgetting where the map was twice? That was weird.
He was jolted from that train of thought by the increasing volume of Gabriel and Annalise’s disagreement. Letting out a sigh of resignation, Nathan hurried over to them to help resolve it and get them all on track. He was running out of time to get his blood, after all.
Nathan’s gran had always said that twice was a coincidence, but three times was a pattern. That was what was running through his head during his walk with Gabriel towards the Cut to Mercury’s house.
“Who?”
“Yoda? From Star Wars? C’mon, everyone’s seen Star Wars!”
Nathan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Okay, sure, Blood Witches didn’t seem to interact with fains as much as Fairborns did, but Gabriel had dated at least one. He had absolutely no excuse for not having watched Star Wars. This was a travesty, one which Nathan vowed to rectify at the first available opportunity.
Gabriel tilted his head slightly at Nathan’s words. “Oh, Star Wars. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ve watched those movies. Luke Skywalker, right? And there's a little robot… thing.”
“Yeah…” Nathan replied slowly, letting Gabriel’s description of R2D2 slide. He figured he had to choose his battles here. “But you don’t know Yoda? He was a pretty important character, mate.” Pretty important was an understatement. Everyone knew Yoda. Even people who haven’t seen Star Wars know about Yoda. Gabriel had to be bullshitting right now. Right? There was no way he’d actually seen Star Wars.
“Sorry, I guess I forgot. I haven’t watched them in years, I don’t think.”
Nathan just shook his head in mock disappointment. “Right, after this is all over, me, you, and Annalise are going to sit down and watch all ten movies. Clearly you need a refresher.”
Ignoring Gabriel’s affronted reply of “Ten?!” he continued, on a roll now. “It’s a right of passage, a… a basic requirement of being alive in this century. We can’t let this continue, Gabriel. And if I have to force you to sit through the entire franchise then I will. Man, I just can’t believe I’m friends with someone who doesn’t know who Yoda is.”
“Are you finished?” Gabriel asked drily. At Nathan’s nod, he added “Good. Because we’re here,” and gestured toward the unassuming stone building in front of them.
As Gabriel figured out where exactly the cut was located, Nathan lounged in the plush chair beside him, and mused over their conversation. Sure, Gabriel claimed to have seen Star Wars, but he didn’t even remember Yoda. Although… Nathan thought back on their adventure over the past week. Gabriel had displayed multiple lapses in memory, from small things like not knowing where their map was, to not remembering who had given him the book he clearly cherished. Maybe he genuinely had just forgotten about one of the characters in a movie he watched years ago. And if Nathan was being honest, he had no idea what to make of the pattern that seemed to be emerging here.
“So, I’ve been wondering,” Nathan started, breaking the silence that had settled over the trio during their trek. After the day they’d all had -Ceelia dying, Nathan meeting his dad and getting his blood, Annalise killing her father- none of them had really felt up to talking. “What’s it like growing up as a Blood Witch?”
“Trying to figure out what you missed out on?” Annalise asked, bumping her shoulder against Nathan’s as they walked.
“Yeah, I mean, the Ozaane witches had such a strong sense of, like community or whatever, y’know? Like, they all knew each other and looked out for each other. Just… makes me wonder what it would have been like to grow up with Blood witches instead of Fairborn Witches is all. They probably would’ve hated me less.”
“Yeah, and given you a massive ego, always going on about how great your dad is,” Annalise retorted good-naturedly. Nathan shoved her in retaliation.
“Anyway, I was just thinking about it. So what’s it like, Gabriel? Being a Blood Witch?”
Gabriel hesitated for a moment, his head tilting to the side slightly, like he was considering the question. Nathan liked how he always did that - always thought about what he was going to say before answering. It made Nathan feel like his questions were taken seriously, even if they were mostly meaningless or just to pass the time.
“Gabriel?” he prompted.
“Ah, I don’t really know, you guys. That’s like saying all Fairborn Witches are brought up the exact same way, y’know?. Blood Witches are the same. It varies. Although, I guess a lot of Bloods spend most of their time running from hunters, and never really settle down. They don’t really associate with Fains the same way Fairborns do. But this is all just what I’ve heard. My upbringing wasn’t exactly-” Gabriel made a hand-wavy motion that Nathan couldn’t quite interpret, “normal, I guess. I don’t remember most of it, anyway.”
“Oh yeah?” Annalise asked.
At the mention of memories, Nathan’s ears perked up. Something else Gabriel didn’t remember? At this point, those instances were starting to add up. Nathan had been paying extra attention to Gabriel lately, in case he displayed any more brief moments of memory loss. It seemed that it was paying off.
“Yeah. Though the way the Ozaane witches organized themselves doesn’t happen very often, I can tell you that much. Most Blood Witches don’t stay in large family units anymore - you stay in one big group, you’re more likely to get noticed by hunters, and anyway, most families aren’t anywhere as big as the Ozaanes to begin with. Blood Witches living in the same area sometimes work together to keep Fairborns out, but they’re not families, just… allies.”
“Like you and the Bloods from the bar?”
“Exactly. We traded information, protected each other from Fairborns, and then they tried to kill us. That’s generally how it goes, at least here in France. In America, Blood Witches living in the same area are more close-knit from what I hear. More like a gang or something. They take care of eachother.”
Nathan was still thinking about Gabriel’s mention of his childhood, the fact that he didn’t remember some of it. It fit with what he knew about Gabriel’s book - it was old and worn, despite the care Gabriel obviously took of it. Not to mention the fact that it was a children’s book. Gabriel had obviously received it when he was much younger, and if he couldn’t remember parts of his childhood, it would make sense that he couldn’t remember who gave it to him. It was intriguing, to be sure, and Nathan was dying to find out more about Gabriel and his elusive past.
“Ah come on, you can’t just throw out the fact that you had a weird childhood and then not tell us about it.”
Annalise ducked behind Nathan to come up on the other side of Gabriel, looping her arm through his. “Yeah, don’t hold out on us, Gabriel.”
“It’s none of your business,” Gabriel replied. “Anyway, Nathan, I didn’t say weird, I said not normal. And besides, Marcus Edge isn’t really known for hanging around with other Bloods. So really, you didn’t miss out on much. You certainly wouldn’t have been living in a cottage in the woods surrounded by a dozen other Blood Witches and chopping wood everyday like the Ozaanes did.” Gabriel said the last part with a grimace, as though he couldn’t think of anything worse.
The change of subject was not lost on Nathan, and Annalise had noticed it too based on the sharp look she threw in Nathan’s direction while Gabriel was speaking. Nathan had confessed to Annalise that it bothered him that they knew virtually nothing about Gabriel’s life prior to this week, carefully leaving out his interest in Gabriel’s memory losses. He and Annalise had agreed to probe Gabriel for information at any available opportunity. A brief mention of his childhood, however vague it was, was the most they had gotten out of him voluntarily so far.
“Don’t try change the subject on us, Gabriel.” Nathan said, grinning.
“Yeah,” Annalise added. “ You know about my evil dad and Nathan’s… maybe-evil dad. If you’ve got some evil relative, we’re not gonna judge you for it, considering the track record of this group. A sibling, or a parent or something? Good relatives, even?” When Gabriel didn’t reply, she pressed further. “Oh come on, Gabriel. We don’t know anything about you, really. Tell us something, anything at all.”
Gabriel didn’t budge. “Seriously guys, I don’t want to talk about it. Just drop it, okay? Forget I said anything.”
Nathan took in a breath to reply, but at the look on Gabriel’s face he hesitated. Nathan and Annalise may have just been joking around, but Gabriel wasn’t. His expression was completely closed off, his mouth set in a firm line. They weren’t going to get anything out of Gabriel, and Nathan didn’t want to risk pissing him off. After the day they’d all had, the last thing their little trio needed was a fight. Nathan decided he’d let it go, for now.
It was pretty much exactly how Nathan described it, the time after you save the world. Of course, Jessica was still out there and no doubt looking to hunt them down - hunt Nathan down. But until then, he, Annalise and Gabriel could relax for a while. Have a night in. Which was exactly what they had decided to do that night, all three of them sprawled across the ground, legs tangled together, in the living room of Nathan’s caravan - the one place they figured no one would think to look for them. Annalise’s head rested against Gabriel’s shoulder, and her hand squeezed Nathan’s, which was lying across her lap. Ever since she had been forced to kill Soul, Nathan and Gabriel had taken to keeping her in the middle of them, as if being surrounded on both sides would keep her protected from the events that had occurred in the forest.
The tv was playing quietly, some sitcom show that none of them were really paying attention to. The noise filled the silence left by the three of them. The more Nathan tried to focus on the plot unfolding on the screen in front of them, the less it made any sense to him. Still, he was desperate to cling to any sense of normalcy.
The silence among them was broken by Annalise.
“Hey, Gabriel,” she murmured, turning her head slightly from where it was resting to face him. “Do you have an evil dad too?”
At Gabriel’s noise of inquiry, she continued. “I was just thinking, I mean, my dad was evil, and the jury’s still out on Nathan’s dad-” Nathan gave her a light slap across the arm in protest, but she ignored him. “So I was wondering whether your dad’s the same.”
Abandoning all pretenses of watching the tv -Nathan had no idea what was going on in the plot, anyway- he switched it off and leaned across Annalise to listen in. As much as the question seemed to have come out of nowhere, he found himself suddenly curious about the answer. Gabriel had avoided talking about his family before, but right now, the three of them were relaxed, and all their guards were down. If there was ever a time that Gabriel was going to talk, this was it.
“Ah, I don’t know. Maybe.” Gabriel wasn’t looking at them, his gaze fixed solidly on the ceiling above them.
Well that was pretty vague, Nathan thought to himself.
Twisting himself around to face Annalise and Gabriel, he folded his arms across Annalise’s shoulder and propped his chin up on top of them. “You don’t know? Sort of a cop-out answer, mate.” Eyeing the new tightness in Gabriel’s jaw, which hadn’t been present a minute ago, he added, softer, “You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to.”
Gabriel studied the popcorn-marked ceiling of the caravan for a moment, the once white color now faded to a yellowish shade with age. Letting out a quiet sigh, he seemed to give in, his shoulders slumping as much as he could without jostling annalise from where her head was lying against him.
“I don’t have any family.” Gabriel’s voice was even, emotionless. He stared straight ahead as he spoke, not looking at Nathan or Annalise.
Nathan felt a sudden burst of guilt. Whatever Gabriel had been through before they met him was something he clearly didn’t want to talk about. It was hard enough for Nathan growing up without parents he didn’t remember, let alone losing his grandmother so suddenly.
“Are they dead?” Nathan asked. “You don’t have to talk about it, you know. If it's, like, painful or whatever.”
“I don’t know. Don’t remember.”
“You always say that, that you don’t remember things,” Annalise remarked. “If you don’t want to tell us you can just say so.”
‘They’re names of people that are important to me.’ Nathan had suspected for a while that Gabriel’s memory lapses were connected, and likely part of some larger problem that he had
“Have you got, like, memory issues or something? Is that what the book’s about, why you write names in it? And why you don’t remember who gave it to you?”
Gabriel’s head whipped around to look at Nathan in surprise, before schooling his face back into a neutral expression. It was only there for a split second, but Nathan caught the panicked look he made at Nathan’s words, the unintentional confirmation he needed.
“You do! You’ve got memory problems, haven’t you?”
“What are you talking about?” Gabriel put on an air of irritated confusion, but his voice shook slightly, betraying the panic Nathan had seen.
“The book, the map… mate, you told us that you don’t remember most of your childhood!”
Gabriel’s mouth opened slightly, as if to reply, but he hesitated for a moment.
“What, like Dory or something?” Annalise interjected. “That fish?”
“Nah, nothing like the fish. There’s nothing wrong with my memory, I’m just missing parts.” Before Nathan could reply that that sounded exactly like there was something wrong with his memory, Gabriel continued.
“It’s because of this powder.” he explained, pulling a small sachet full of yellow powder out of one of his pockets and waving it from side to side slightly. Nathan recognised it from when Gabriel had been arrested - he had used it on one of the policemen. “This stuff erases specific memories.”
As he was tucking it back into his pocket, Annalise asked “What, are you saying you erase your own memories?” That didn’t sound right. Nathan recalled the pain on Gabriel’s face as he admitted that he couldn’t remember who had given him the book, and the reverence with which he had ran his finger over the list of names written onto the inside cover as he explained their meaning to Nathan on the boat. Gabriel would never have done that to himself.
“No,” Gabriel confirmed. “It’s Mercury who does- who did it. She erased my memories of my parents, and my life before I… worked for her. Others, too, though I don’t exactly know what I’m missing. Some of the names in my book I remember, others I don’t. It messes with my short-term memory too, but i think that’s more of a side-effect.”
Nathan didn’t know how to reply to that. Mercury was taking Gabriel’s memories. His memories. Fuck. Nathan couldn’t even imagine being forced to forget about his mom, his gran, Annalise or Gabriel- having them reduced to names on a page, not knowing what they meant to him.
Annalise let out a quiet cry of indignation at that revelation. “She takes your memories? What the fuck, Gabriel, why didn’t you tell us?”
He raised an eyebrow, glancing down at Annalise. “I was supposed to be taking you two to her, yes? It wouldn’t have been conducive to tell you about every bad thing she’s done. She could get you your blood, and that was what was important.”
Nathan reached over and gripped Gabriel’s hand in his. “You’re what’s important, Gabriel, alright? You shouldn’t have had to feel like getting my blood was a bigger issue than your memories. Fuck.”
“You would have died, Nathan. I’m fine. I was dealing with it, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay!” Annalise chimed in. At Gabriel’s unconvinced look, she added, “It’s not. Look, Gabriel, memories are- they’re so fucking important, okay? And there’s absolutely nothing in the world that you should consider an acceptable reason to lose them.
“Look, I got my blood in the end, didn’t I? So now, we don’t need Mercury. She can fuck right off as far as I’m concerned. And while we’re running from the Fairborn Council, or my sister, or Bloods, or whoever, we’ll look for a way to restore your memories. And then you can tell us all about your family, evil or not.
Gabriel smiled at Nathan, but it was half-hearted at best. “Please, Nathan, I’m tired and we’ve had a long week. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Okay?”
“Okay,” Nathan murmured, and gave Gabriel’s hand a squeeze. If Gabriel didn’t want to talk about it right now, that was fine with Nathan. After all, they’d only known each other for a week. What Gabriel had shared just then was enough for him- and besides, he had finally gotten his answers about Gabriel’s memory. The rest would come later.
For now, Nathan turned the volume on the tv back up and the trio lost themselves in the comfort of finally having their quiet night in, just the three of them in their own little universe. For that brief night, there were no magical gunfights, no evil witches coming after them. Just three people who loved each other, basking in each other’s presence. And for now, that was all they needed- each other.